The SEOM (Scientific Exploitation of Operational Missions) element:

The prime objective of the SEOM element is to federate, support and expand the large international research community that the ERS, ENVISAT and the Envelope programmes have build up over the last 20 years. It aims to further strengthen the international leadership of European Earth Observation research community by enabling them to extensively exploit observations from future European operational EO missions. This will enable the science community to address many new avenues of scientific research that will be opened by free and open access to data from operational EO missions.

The SEOM element is building on the scientific achievements of the missions like ERS and Envisat. It offers specifically tailored, timely research opportunities allowing European scientists to analyse data from European EO missions in particular from the Sentinels which follow the ERS and Envisat era and long term data sets. SEOM provides a programmatic framework to enable the EO science community of ESA member states to collectively play a leading role in international efforts.

Educational SEOM activities are focusing training next generation scientists and transferring expertise from senior European EO scientists, to a large number of younger scientists, via international training events, each typically for about 60 participants and a 1-2 two weeks duration.

SEOM continues the user consultation processes that have proven effective for ERS and Envisat research communities by convening a series of re-current international workshops, each focusing on a relevant specialized EO thematic domain. At each workshop international EO experts will present latest results and assess the state of art in their field. They will make community-wide prioritized recommendations for actions on key research issues that can be significantly advanced by scientific analysis of data from operational missions. These recommendations will form the basis for annual work plans of SEOM.

The ensuing projects will be tendered as research opportunities for the EO science communities in ESA Member States.